Friday, 11 March 2016

education, education, education

It has been an intense week of classroom education. I say week, it is four days, with Friday off to recover, and boy do I need it.

The training has been intense - 8.30am starts, usually going on to around 7.30pm, but it has been really good. There was just a mass of information to offload on to us for these first four days, and that obviously means death-by-Powerpoint to a certain extent, but we did get to practice each bit as well, and to be honest it is the only way to get through the material. Next week we will have some information to absorb, but we will also be spending much longer working on our proposals. My boss will be judging the final presentations, so I want to be good.

I am loving the fact that I am actually getting high quality training for my role. This is not something that is always there, it certainly was not available at Starfleet, so I am making the most of it and really getting stuck in.

I did have a slight embarrassing Tuesday evening, when about eight of the group went for an Indian, and I managed to fall asleep near the end of the meal. To be honest, it was the perfect storm; I was very tired from the day's training, we did not get there until 9pm (i.e. an hour from my favoured bedtime) and, worst of all, I was at the end of the table, up against a half-height wall, the other side of which was the bar, so it was very easy for me to catch one the waiter's eyes, and ask for another pint. Thankfully one of my colleagues was driving, and he gave me a lift back to the hotel. To avoid any further embarrassment, and especially since my new boss would be present, I drove to the Wednesday night meal, which also started an hour earlier, so consequently there was nothing bad to write home about.

This weekend we have the usual morning of sport, and in the afternoon I will be attending my 'van to fit a new Al-Ko hitch to the van. This is needed because my new car has a standard swan-neck tow bar, pretty much defacto for any factory-fitted tow bar, but one that cannot take my snake-bar. This new hitch will therefore provide the anti-snake feature within the tow hitch itself. We need this to be done for Easter, when we plan to go away to the New Forest.

That's about all for this week. Have a great weekend, and speak next week.